


expect the unexpected

by foundCarcosa



Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-08
Updated: 2013-12-08
Packaged: 2018-01-04 02:13:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1075332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foundCarcosa/pseuds/foundCarcosa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Dovahkiin and his left-hand man get cornered in the Sanctuary by the most unlikely of subjects.</p>
            </blockquote>





	expect the unexpected

**Author's Note:**

> I'm waiting for the day when I'll write serious TES fic instead of bawdy cracky slice-of-life shenanigans.
> 
> Still waiting.

"So I follows her up the stairs, right, and I’m thinking, boy, this is going to be a story to tell for sure—"

Drustan stops short, his hands frozen in mid-gesture, as a peal of laughter rings through the Sanctuary. The walls ring with it for moments after it’s stopped, and Llovyn winces and wriggles a finger into his ear as if to clean the sound right out of it.

"… What in the name of Clavicus Vile was that?"

"Well, first, don’t ever say that name in front of me again," Llovyn starts, his rheumy eyes narrow and his thin lips curled in something like horrified revulsion, "and second, that was… Cicero."

"The crazy jester you told me about?" Drustan stares, gold-ringed eyes incredulous. "He’s still _alive?”_

The Dunmer clears his throat, his chair creaking as he shifts in it. “I spared him.”

"Llo’—!"

"Don’t you start," Llovyn interrupts, holding up a warning hand. "Don’t you start with me…"

"Llovyn, I am _not_ sleepin’ up in here with a mad merrymaker runnin’ about, imagining my _head_ on a spike! I know his type, it’s _us_ they go for first—”

"Red, If you make this a racial thing, _I_ will envision your head on a spike.”

As they argue, Cicero’s shadow shimmers into view on the wall, creeping closer to them, wavering in the torchlight. Llovyn stares at it, then into the hallway leading into the room.

"And if I spy a singing bird," came the Keeper’s reedy, singsong voice, "I’ll _snap_ its _neck_ before it’s heard… heh, heh! Oh, yes…”

"Do you _hear_ that shit?” Drustan hisses, now staring into the hallway as well.

For all the dramatics, Cicero himself strolls into the room with little fanfare, slipping the belled hat off his head and flashing a wide grin at the two seated men.  
"Oh, didn’t see you there, Cicero didn’t. Good evening, good _evening,_ especially to _you,_ my dear Listener…”

He affects a flourishing bow as Llovyn groans quietly and pinches the bridge of his nose.  
Drustan shakes his head slowly, and waits for more, but Cicero is tittering like a girl, winking in the Redguard’s direction before sauntering onward.

"Loony switches like a tavern girl," Drustan comments lowly, without even realising he’d spoken aloud until Llovyn’s rheumy and now aghast eyes focus on him.

"What?! _You’re_ the one that spared him, Ash-boy!”

==

Cicero clears his throat, the sound of his own laughter still tickling his eardrums, and tosses the jester hat onto his bed. Raking his hands through his longish hair, he smiles a little to himself, thinking about the looks on the faces of the men he’d just passed.

Poor, wretched Listener. Llovyn Arendur, Dunmer without history or family ties, appropriately broody for one of his ilk; devoted to the Brotherhood the way men got attached to their families. He’d wept when the Falkreath Sanctuary was burned out, _wept,_ oh, the pathos, the torment!

Cicero shivers in delight, a chuckle escaping his lips. Yes, poor, wretched Listener, so red-hearted, so warm-blooded. Cicero hasn’t seen such devotion, such _passion,_ indeed, since Cheydinhal…

And that friend of his, the Redguard, with the _eyes_ … Drustan, just Drustan, an enigma in himself, and oh, how Cicero loves his mysteries.

Perhaps he could lure them both in.  
He would have to put away the jester act. Perhaps they bought it a little too well.

"And what if they _did_ buy it? Hmm?” he murmurs to himself as he strips, pulling open a dresser drawer. There is only one garment there — a robe, once a necromancer’s, still thrumming with a remnant of power. It looked good on him, so he believed.  
"What if they did buy it? I have the element of surprise on my side. They won’t expect poor, mad Cicero, would they? Maybe they’d _like_ it.”

He thinks of Llovyn’s whitish eyes and Drustan’s gold-rimmed ones, looking him over with surprise and then interest, and smiles.

==

"Dear Sithis," Llovyn whispers, and Drustan looks up from the pot.

"What in… the name…" The spoon clatters to the floor.

"Hello, boys."  
Cicero — but it couldn’t _really_ be him, could it? Not with that voice — stands in the archway in nothing but a bluish-black robe, hip cocked, arms folded. He’d done something with his hair. Llovyn shakes his head with the same cornered look he’d given Babette some time ago.

But Babette had been messing with him. Cicero, the joker, the trickster, … _wasn’t._

"I like to think this suits me a little better than that old jester’s getup, don’t you?" he continues, undeterred, unfolding his arms and spreading them wide. The robe parts a little. His skin is smooth, lightly bronzed, except where a sparse dusting of reddish hair trails down—

"Okay, that’s it, what the _hell_ is going on here.”  
Drustan’s voice sounds a little thin, and he swallows, self-conscious.

"What does it look like, genius?" A hint of the old mockery seeps into his decidedly more mature voice now, and he steps into the room. The robe slides around his body, the bluish gleam catching the torchlight. "Babette and Nazir are out. It’s just you two… and me. And Cicero gets… cold and bored on these long nights."

Still shaking his head, Llovyn backs up, hands up as if in surrender. “I don’t… I… uh, Nazir wouldn’t approve. Drustan’s free, though.”

Spluttering, Drustan glares at him, but he deftly avoids it.

"You gonna stop throwing me under the carriage like this," the Redguard growls, but Cicero smiles and tilts his head and bites his lip like the young Nord girls in Falkreath who ask to touch his hair and see his cock, and maybe he’s just considering it because it’s just been a while for him… that is as good an excuse as any, isn’t it…?

"None of that lunatic laughter, though, or I’m biting your cock off," Drustan murmurs, and Cicero grins.


End file.
